samedi 24 mars 2012

The links in article "Carlos Hugo, not without remarks abt Tito, Nestor Makhnov, Mussolini" get a funny by-product when I try to click them on this computer in Georges Pompidou Center of Paris:

%E2%80%8B - I did not put that thing there!
http://enfrancaissurantimodernism.blogspot.fr/2012/03/%E2%80%8Bcarlismo-de-izquierda-comun%E2%80%8Bismo-o-no.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E2%80%8Bwiki/Rufino_Niccacci

The reasoning of Ejiciens is not altogether clear in every respect, and there are more than hints of some of the popular grounds for opposing usury which were ultimately rejected because they did not stand up to examination, such as the idea that time could not be sold and that money was purely a measure.

Time cannot be sold. When you hire out something, it is not time you sell, but probable amount of use and probable amount of tear and wear during time - estimated on a medium and giving hiring person credit for the fact that part of the use is his own credit since his own work, you only hired him the tool. When you hire out boats for pleasure rides you are asking per hour an equivalent of the work you do every day to keep them functionable. In no such licit occupation are you really selling time.

The idea that money is purely a measure is not a popular idea that cannot stand up to examination, but an ideal deviances of which are deleterious to the good use of money. Inflation is for instance making money less useful as a pure measure and therefore less useful as money.

Stork then goes on to give a catering firm as an example.

This last is what is generally called profit, a term that is often used loosely and inexactly. As we see here, Ryan reduces it to the proprietor's labor, plus his entrepreneurial abilities and risks. It is not an open-ended invitation to charge as much as the market will bear, but rather there must exist some title of justification such as Ryan enumerates here. Looked at in this way the limiting of the reimbursement for the consumptibles sold seems obvious. Of course the caterer cannot charge for 110 bottles of wine if he delivers only 100. His profit, in reality his salary and compensation for risk, etc., comes otherwise and is not gained at the expense of expecting more in return than what he supplied.

I would not even include his entrepreneurial abilities and risks. Risks are a matter of trusting providence, the reward for which is Heaven. St Thomas has already argued that taking risks of not getting repaid is no motive for getting more repaid when getting repaid.

A question is whether montes pietatis could be excluded from that reasoning. Evidently serving in such a one for a salary would not want to get too high salaries. They existed to make small people survive between businesses and works, but also to put small businesses on their feet.

Managerial abilities are in the realm of potentialities, not in that of factual value producing work, in which such potentialities are partly made actual. The question is a bit of how much you boss about. How much work is that to one? One can argue that the more you do it well, the less you need doing it, so the less work it is.

I would actually argue the rights of a catering firm owner a bit otherwise. You give your customer a number of items you bought, and you give him the work you do on it. The value of what you bought is the price you paid. The work you do is however not identical to what you pay your workers and yourself as one of them. One can argue that the value of the work you do is the use it is to your customer - or rather, usually not the real use to each customer, but the usefulness in general.

I did a work on just price back when writing on the deceased (february 2009) MSN Group Antimodernism. The real basis for a just pricing is not expense restoration (Marx' theory of "added value" makes any difference between what you ask your customers and your expenses including wages to workers robbery either towards underpaid workers or towards overpaying customers), nor access and demand (which would make prices like wheat=its weight in gold just in cases where there is too little wheat), but its kind of use.

Food and wine is immediately consumed and individually so: I am not eating the same sandwich as you are eating if we both eat a whole sandwhich, and if we share a sandwich we are not eating same part of it.

Clothes are individually worn, but not immediately consumed. A pair of trousers worn as only trousers wears after a few months. If you exchange with other trousers and wash after each day of use, and let it rest, it may keep much longer - depending on frequency or rarity of use.

Work tools like - for a writer - pencils or pens or whatever your work is in obviously have a relation to what gains you can make by them which depends on what business you are in.

Housing and means of transport are much longer lasting, ideally inheritable over centuries (means of transport tend to wear quicker than really well built houses).

You very clearly need more cups of water and more breads in your life than trousers. Some are even known to find it not immoderate to have as many bottles of wine as trousers, or more. That does not mean they are drunkards. On the other hand each trouser needs more work than each bread or bottle of wine. And same relation applies to houses versus trousers.

For each category, the same kind of relation to either expenses or rarity (meaning an expense of transport, for instance) or demand (like a luxurious variety of the category: more people want Levi's than other brands of jeans, more people with money want Russian Caviar than tarama or Kalles Kaviar - all of them are egg roe based, more people with moeny want champagne or rioja than the wines from viennese vineyard suburbs, etc.), that loosely comes along with the difference between categories and therefore understandably but mistakenly is mistaken for basis of value, are real bases for modification in price of items in each category: why Russian Caviar is - outside Caspian Sea area - more expensive than tarama made from Greek or French fish roe or Kalles Kaviar made from Norwegian or Swedish fish roe. It may be added that Russian Caviar is pure fish roe, whereas tarama and the Swedish tube caviar are dishes made from fish roe with other ingredients too, and those of less value. But it is also true that the Beluga sturgeon is rarer than the cods or haddocks whose roe serve for Kalles Kaviar.

So, while it is true that expenses must be covered, it is not quite as true that this is the main basis of the price a business can licitly charge. Indeed, the price charged is mainly related to utility as evaluated by most customers, and the wage expenses is related to utility of a worker per hour with such and such a capacity for work.

And here we come to the interest of montes pietatis. The use is the precise same for money lent as for money returned. Meaning it is difficult to say they are in and of themselves a licit form of gain. They were decided as licit due to loan sharks making investments more and more expensive made loans more needed for investments than would usually be the case.

I take it that the interest charged by montes pietatis is a kind of taxation for the public good of providing an alternative to loan sharks, which the montes pietatis could not do if they had no income - not a gain licit in itself. Because the essential utility of the loan is in and of itself measured in the amount loaned, and therefore in and of itself measured in the exact returning of that precise amount. But accessorily there is an utility of getting that loan from a mons pietatis, in situations where loan sharks by giving access to loans make it more expensive and hence more loan dependent to start a business.

Otherwise one might think there be a contradiction between the Council of Vienne (in France) condemning usury and the council of Lateran V, allowing the montes pietatis to charge interesse - the word and usage from which we derive our word interest. Such a conflict is not possible between two ecumenical councils, only between an ecumenical council and one falsely thought of as ecumenical, or between two councils falsely thought of as ecumenical. And either or both of them could be that only if Papacy was not the main succession of St Peter - as indeed is the position of Gregory Palamas, honoured by Orthodox as one of the "defendors of Orthodoxy". But even assuming the Orthodox are in the Church, we need not assume Latins - Latin Rite Roman Catholics - to be outside it: if Gregory Palamas were right about St Peter's essential successor being each bishop in each diocese, then the Papist position would be false, but not necessarily as false as to exclude from the Church.

So, even if Orthodox were right about Ecclesiology (they are wrong about filioque, I have read up on St Athanasius and other early Western filioquists), and Vienne were only a local council (as Rome thought of Constantinople V - with Gregory Palamas - as a local council erring on some particulars which Rome condemned, but not erring in everything: it was in part confirmed by Vatican I), even so, we would have to take into account evidence for the Church regarding usury, i e the taking of interest, under ordinary circumstances, as mortally sinful.

Having made such a pronunciation one may wonder if I live up to it. I received a larger sum from a sale, and the sum was on a bank account for longer than I wanted. I calculated what was interest. I did not know what real owner had given even more interest than that to the bank, and I did not care to ask the bank, so I gave the interest part to the poor, via an intermediate. I might have given the interest part to the Church, but as I was then a convinced Palmarian, and had insufficient contact with "headquarters" near Sevilla, I was not giving it to the local parish in Communion with John Paul II. So, to the poor it went, unless my intermediate double crossed me: if so that is his fault, not mine.

In my offer about how to use my writings (beyond the online reading which is of course for free) I apply the principle of usefulness estimates for just pricing, insofar as a printer / editor (amateur or professional) can pay me royalties according to his estimate or if he is poor treat my work as for economic purposes in the common domain:

As a friend at once of Mussolini and Lyndon LaRouche*, it bugs me from time to time to see LaRouche or his associates associate Mussolini and fascism with Synarchism.

Time magazine was created in 1923 as a mouthpiece for the American Synarchists, grouped around the banking interests of J.P. Morgan. It is hardly a coincidence that, simultaneous to the launching of Time, in Europe, Count Richard Coudenhove-Kalergi, another leading Synarchist, was launching his Pan-European Union, which would be a leading propaganda vehicle for the winning of support among Europe's financial oligarchy for the "Hitler-Mussolini" universal fascism project.**

There may have been some kind of project to make Hitler and Mussolini universally applicable models for fascism.

However, if you do read Chesterton about his visit in Rome, the Mussolini chapter, you will find that according to what Mussolini told him, Mussolini did not regard fascism as anything except a specifically Italian expedient. Mussolini was not doctrinaire about how each and every country should be run.

If you look up his speech of 3 jan. 1925, related to the Matteotti affair, where he had been accused of imitating the Cheka and of using it, he was not even doctrinaire about how Italy should be run. He volunteered to be tried according to paragraph 47. It was perhaps not his fault but that of the Secessione Aventiniana, that his speech was met with more applause than effect. Had parliamentarians of non-fascist or even anti-fascist parties have been there, he might have been impeached as he offered to be.

Of course we do not know whether he would have made that offer if there had been such chances of its being accepted. We do not know that he would have made the offer, but we do not know he would not have made it. But we do know that he did make it, though in a climate in the Italian parliament in which its effectiveness as putting him on trial was to say the least doubtful. And we do know that according to his words on the occasion, fascism was not God's or Evolution's or whatever's law on how any and every country should be run, but an expedient for Italy then and there.

We could suspect he had an idea Evolution offered no law once and for all knowable to man, but we do not know him to have expressed such a horror. Because if he had, how could his brother Alessandro, a Catholic and thus rooted in Natural Law have supported him? And so many other Catholics, including the part time coalition with Dom Luigi Sturzo's and Alcide Degasperi's Christian Democrats?

So, though Synarchists may have supported fascism - "universal fascism" even - we can say that the original fascist was not a Synarchist supporting universal fascism. The worst we can say was that he was willing to play with power in ways in which he risked being a puppet. During the Salò Republic we do not know if he had much choice: he was delivered from one prison, a visible such, unto an invisible captivity under the German Nazis. One more thing about it: one of his accusers in Matteotti murder, was during that period shown the Matteotti papers by Mussolini, and he concluded for his part that Il Duce had been cleared through those papers.

Luce had a visceral hatred of FDR and the New Deal. He attacked them both on his speaking tours and in print. Intimates reported that he became apoplectic with violent rage at the mere mention of FDR's name.

Does it follow that Mussolini had that too? I think not.

Shutting down violent strikes (notably such as included violence against farmers) while supporting some striking oneself and then generally improving conditions for workers when one gets the chance - Luce may have missed that aspect but Chesterton did not - does not strike me as very Republican politics in Economics.

Has LaRouche or have Steven P Meyer and Jeffrey Steinberg ever analysed the Programma di San Sepolcro of the original Fasci di Combattomento? Is he or are they aware of the fact that Jews (and alas Masons too) played a role in helping Musso to power, and that he was long pretty scornful towards any idea of racialism?

That the Carta della Razza of 1938 was a complete turnabout (Chesterton had interviewed him during his still antiracialist period) from the kind of politics that anti-Semites and Racialists admiring Hitler were hardly into letting through? That the mayor of Assisi when helping Padre Ruffino Nicacci's Assis Underground felt he was quite in the line with Mussolini in his older and better days, according to Alexander Ramati's researched novel?

I think that Il Duce may own part of his bad reputation in the English speaking world not just to avowed antifascists, but also to admirers of the less prudent kind, such as admired Hitler (and thus Sanger) as well or even more. Chesterton and Benito specifically mentioned Mosley and at least before Gilbert Keith the "old syndicalist" never expressed any admiration for that man. I wonder if Mussolini would have put Luce in the same category. But I think he might have been too much of a sucker for good press to really protest against the articles of Luce, even when lopsided. And maybe some of LaRouche's distancing from fascism may be due to attacks from Jewish interest organisations who resent the similar approach of fascists (at least Hitler) and LaRouche in limiting interest rates. Not at all suggesting all and every Jew is a Shylock, but I think there might be some connections between Rotschilds and ADL, and Lyndon may have noted that.

Fact is the one notable strike condoned by Fasci di Combattimento was against Fiat factories obeying government in raising working hours. I think what EIR habitually describes as Synarchism is rather in the line of FIAT than in that of:

*When I say "friend of LaRouche" I mean from my view: I am not saying he or his adherents are returning my friendship. The reserve I have met when sending out parts of my material actually suggests the opposite. I recall Maurras, who, when asked "is de la Tour de Pin of the Action Française" answered a resounding "No, it is Action Française which is of de la Tour de Pin". One thing is for certain about La Rouche and Maurras: both admire people like Colbert.

Manuel Fernández de Sevilla: To express our support and admiration for Carlos Hugo de Borbón Parma, for his outstanding and original contribution to Spanish, Italian and European politics, for his social vision of Monarchy. This is a Legitimist Monarchist group created and formed by carlist people

James Bogle: Don Carlos Ugo was a divorced Communist who treacherously abandoned the principles of Carlism and, indeed, of Catholicism. By the very house rules of Carlism and the Kingdom of Spain he had abdicated his rights by his apostasy. The true claimant is Don Sixto-Enrique who is still alive, I'm happy to say. Your judgment regarding Duke Francis is also awry, Snr Fernandez, for the reasons I have already rehearsed which you perhaps missed. If you consider primogeniture the sole basis of legitimism then you are forced to abandon the Stuarts, who derive from the usurping Tudors, and look to the Houses of Plantagenet, Cerdic, Arthur or the Roman Caesars.

Luis Infante: To answer Mr Lundahl's question: Carlos Hugo's death has not affected Spanish succession in the least. No one (with the exception of less than a handful of eccentrics who only seem to exist on the Internet) reconized him as anything after he himself deserted his followers in 1978 and proceeded on to recognize the Usurper Juan Carlos. As a matter of fact, Carlos Hugo had ceased to be Prince of the Asturias around 1975. May God have had mercy on his soul.

Hans-Georg Lundahl: R I P. But Carlos Hugo recognising Juan Carlos is about as good or bad as Francis II recognising Elisabeth II. Either one has to uphold one's claim to own it, or one has not. If Francis II can state he has no claims as to Elisabeth's throne, either he is not de jure king of Scotland, England and Ireland - or Carlos Hugo remained as legitimate as that line had ever been. A Communist is of course bad - if that can be proven to be the case (checking up on his political doctrine with say Papal condemnations or Thomasic pre-condemnations of Communism). A Constitutionalist may be as bad. As for divorced, I just had a glimpse of something also very ill as to the person honoured in this group.

Luis Infante: No, Mr Lundahl. Primogeniture is checked by the laws of each realm, in addition to the principles (from natural law on) so well explained by Thomistic doctors. In the case of the Spains, according to our traditional laws recognition of a usurper implies the loss of rights for he who commits that act of treason (for treason it is, and again our laws lay that out nicely). Loss of rights also happens by not conforming to the traditional constitution of the Spains in its entirety, and this has doctrinal implications. Thus a non-Catholic, or a Liberal, a Socialist, anyone in favour of the party system, etc. cannot be King of the Spains or keep any rights of succession.

Carlos Hugo was a frivolous opportunist - Francoist, Christian-Democrat, Socialist, NWO Liberal, all in succession, and all in writing and in public. He could have been king. He messed it up, and messed up Carlism in the process. A sad story.

Hans-Georg Lundahl: ‎"Thus a non-Catholic," - if he divorced and remarried, that is indeed a sad story ... " or a Liberal," ... what precisely were his errors of Liberal doctrine? "... a Socialist," - speaking of which - did Franco reman legitimate while empowering the psychiatry and child welfare of Valleja Najera or was that a Socialist error? "... anyone in favour of the party system, etc. cannot be King of the Spains or keep any rights of succession." - Exactly how was he in favour of the party system? Pragmatically or absolutely? As having raised my arm with an "Eviva Cristo Rey" in front of Montejurra, I feel I ought to know a thing or two more about this story.

Luis Infante: Mr Lundahl, I was about to reply to Mr James Bogle when your comment came up. I will tackle yours first, as it is easier.

For a legitimist, Franco was never legitimate, except perhaps (stress on perhaps) during the war. With or without Vallejo-Nájera. Carlists do not raise their arms in salute - that is a silly Fascist thing imitated by the Falangists. Who, in turn, never used the "¡Viva Cristo Rey!".

Carlos Hugo never "remarried", pray do not overdo it - he was bad enough without that. If you are interested in Carlos Hugo's aberrations, most of them are in print, and Google will give you access to them. And now I must again leave for real life - lunchtime.

James Bogle: I agree with Luis Infante save to note that the salute was originally ancient Roman. The Fascists took it over and spoiled it forever. To be fair to Franco, I think it was his intention always to restore the monarchy but that was not easy in the period after the war. In the end he settled for Juan Carlos who has been unimpressive and of doubtful legtimacy.

As for Don Carlos Hugo, he was a Titoist Communist by his own admission.

Does anyone need reminding how many millions of innocents the Communists have mass-murdered, raped and tortured, not least taking a particular delight in doing so to Christian believers and monarchists?

Hans-Georg Lundahl: Enjoy your lunch, glad he did not remarry.

Above for Luis Infante, this here for James Bogle: Titoism is economically not Communist. Murdering played a very minor role in establishing it. OK, some cooperatives in Croatia or Slovenia are such because previous owners, as in German heritage aristocrats, were murdered during partisan warfare. But the system as such is neither Communist nor murderous. So, however much I destest Tito's take on Cardinal Stepinac, which is also an issue with Serbian Orthodox non-Communists to this day, I cannot take a confession of sympathy with Tito's system as an admission of Communism in the condemned sense. Comparing Tito to Mao is like comparing Dollfuss to Hitler. Obviously, there were bad things going on under Tito as elsewhere under Communists, Social Democrats, Labour Party, and Democrats not sufficiently repudiated by Republicans, like abortion. If Carlos Hugo specifically mentioned abortion "liberties" as one good point in Tito's program, that would very obviously qualify him as bad, but a general sympathy for the system, as opposed both to Sovietic, Chinese Communism and Western Capitalism and Scandinavian Capitalism with Fiscal Socialism is not enough to stamp him as bad. The Serbian farmers enjoyed the same kind of individual ownership within communal limitations under Tito as they had done under the Kraljevina, under the Turks, and even before Kosovo Polje.

James Bogle: Baloney. Tell that to the Cetniks and Royal Yugoslav Army soldiers who were murdered in cold blood by Tito and his partisans. Have you never read Count Nikolai Tolstoy's books on the victims of Yalta? Tito was an undoubted and self-confessed Communist whose partisans committed some of teh worst murders of WWII including the infamous "Pit of Kocevje". Dollfuss was never a Nazi but was an anti-Nazi who was murdered by Nazis. Wake up, man!

As Luis Infante told you, go on-line and look up Don Carlos Hugo for yourself. He was a self-confessed Communist and social libertarian who wholly repudiated his Catholic upbringing. Stop kidding yourself.

I really cannot carry on this discussion if you are going to continue to make such ill-founded and ridiculous assertions. Really. It is descending into fatuity.

Hans-Georg Lundahl: Tito was a Communist under his partisan days. Which I was not defending. Just as I am not defending Mussolini in politics after 1938, when he got too close to Hitler. But there was a day when Mussolini still preferred Dollfuss to Hitler and there came a day when Tito took his distance from East block Communism - obviously before Carlos Hugo decalred himself a Titoist Communist. Since, before that day, the distinction woould have had no point. So, whether you think the discussion fatuitous or not, did Carlos Hugo or did he not defend Tito's crimes in the partisan days? Speaking of Cetniks, some Croats remember these as quite as bad if not worse than Tito's partisans. Oh, b t w Tito was a Croat.

Looking up, will do. Whether that changes my opinion or not is another matter. It would not be the first time looking up a thing my opponents in discussion wanted me to look up confirmed my position.

James Bogle: Try looking it up before you respond with arrogance. If the truth confirms you in your falsity that is your problem. Moreover, you have heard from Luis Infante on the subject so the likelihood of you being wrong is further increased.

Your Mussolini rant is irrelevant and I don't need to be reminded, least of all by you, that Tito was a Croat. Everyone knows that. Tito lived and died a Communist. That he never apologised for his war crimes is a fair indication of his views. Why you want to defend Don Carlos Hugo who opposed your most cherished views is a perversity which you might be able to explain to yourself but you will have considerable difficulty in explaining to any rational audience. Fatuity is always hard to justify.

Hans-Georg Lundahl: Well, because Carlos Hugo did not condone Tito's war crimes - only his economic model, for which the war crimes are not relevant. So, I did look up, using Spanish Wiki. My article does end with a challenge back to you. Might Luis Infante be working in a bank or two? I mean bankers are a bit prone to exaggerate the virtues of Capitalism or the vices of ANY kind of socialism.

Just as primogeniture is not the last word in legitimism, juridic ownership does not settle _all_ the disputes there are between rich and poor. And that really is one of my most cherished views, a bit unlike what you presume them to be. Perhaps.

Oh, if you wanted to be somewhat polite, you might apologise for your cavalier take on Mussolini and Tito. My mother's civil husband, the father of my sister is a Croat, who does not execrate the memory of Tito. His father, who grew up in the Italian part of now Yugoslavia, cherishes Mussolini. Who in turn defended Dollfuss and part of the time Schuschnigg too against Hitler. My maternal grandfather was a syndicalist and a royalist. Now, will you please stop offending them with mere lack of politesse against your political pet peeves? Not to mention, unless you take up the challenge at the end of my essay, slander of one of them.

James Bogle: Mussolini was an unbeliever and his mates were those who had, in the previous century, imprisoned the Pope and worked to overthrow Catholic monarchy and Tito was a Communist as brutal and hypocritical as any. I have no time for either of them.

And if you agree that primogeniture is not the last word in legitimism then I cannot see why you want to defend a turncoat like Don Carlos Hugo who abandoned the principles of Carlism and of his religion in exchange for a mess of Communist pottage. If you think bankers are against Socialism then you need to come back to earth. Where do you think they got the hundreds of billions to bail them out of the present crisis? Yes. That's right. The government.

"Mussolini was an unbeliever?" - Benito was an unbeliever, Alessandro was a Catholic. HItler whom he initially despised was an unbeliever, Dollfuss, who was his friend till he died, a saintly believer.

"his mates were those who had, in the previous century, imprisoned the Pope" - He was the guy who in his century signed Lateran treaty of 1929 with Pope Pius XI. Actually the Dimond brothers argue that the Seven Kings of the apocalypse are connected both to EU and to "Kings of the Vatican". Right.

‎"his mates were those who had, in the previous century, ... worked to overthrow Catholic monarchy " - but he in his century worked to defend us from Communism.

‎"Tito was a Communist as brutal and hypocritical as any." - But that has nothing to do with Titoism as an economic system of Yugoslavia - except as it involved expropriation. Now, did Carlos Hugo speak up in favour of expropriations?

Oh, I do think bankers are very much in favour of very statecontrolled socialism, whether Social Democratic or Bolshevik - what Carlos Hugo spoke up against.

‎"cannot see why you want to defend a turncoat like Don Carlos Hugo who abandoned the principles of Carlism and of his religion" - That is very much your version of what he did and so far not mine.

James Bogle: Hans Georg Lundahl likes to re-write history in his own image. Mussolini was a Socialist atheist who founded the Fascist Party from the Fasci di Combattimento, the same people whose predecessors ahd imprisoned Bl Pope Pius IX. They were neither Catholics nor Monarchists. Mussolini only signed the Lateran Treaty as a cynical political ploy. Only an historical ignoramus could think it meant he had become a Catholic. "He worked to defend us from Communism" - what, by delviering us over to Nazism? Pah. And he did not do much to fight Communism, being himself a Socialist. So fatheaded is Hans Georg that he buys the ridiculous myth that the EU is some kind of Vatican plot. Right. So that's why Catholics like Rocco Buttiglione were excluded for their Catholic views from holding a Commissioner post, I suppose! As for Don Carlos Hugo, he was the original champagne Socialist and was entirely at home with Socialist and Social Democrat bankers as he was with Bolsheviks. A real turncoat.

Hans-Georg Lundahl: James Bogle likes strawmen. I did not say that Benito Mussolini became a Catholic. I say that his brother Alessandro never ceased to be one. That is one Catholic vouching for him during his fascist period (in some senses, he deteriorated 38), and Dollfuss is another.

This however is another strawman: "So fatheaded is Hans Georg that he buys the ridiculous myth that the EU is some kind of Vatican plot." - Did I say so? No. Did I claim Dimond brothers said so? No. Did they say so? Do not know, but not the article I read. They did say that Vatican is the religious head of Novus Ordo Catholics who are a majority of EU population - and that the Vatican State begins with Mussolini/Pius XI treaty 1929.

As for Carlos Hugo, instead of telling me whom he drank champagne with, you might, if there is a real case against him, link to where he defends indefensible things, like abortion, contraception, expropriation from owners not obviously overexploiting and undernourishing to killing their dependents. But saying he drank champagne with a bad guy means little to me. Do you know whom I have been drinking morning coffee with? I am not sure I would want to know all the details.

One may of course, if one likes, despise Mussolini for being a turncoat. In the end, he was into the Salò Republic, which was evil. But fascists who had admired him in his better days were against it, among them the Mayor of Assisi.

Other notable differences between Mussolini (pre-Salò, ideally pre-1938) and Hitler include: Hitler imitated Jules Ferry about school compulsion (1938!), Mussolini did not (at least before 1938) in the sense that Italian immigrants to S. Sweden after the war include housewives who had had - under Mussolini - 2-5 school grades only. And Mussolini, to the best of my knowledge, never imitated Margaret Sanger, as did Swedish Social Democrats and, one year later and for a shorter duration, Hitler.

He was born same year as my grandmother and died same year as my grandfather - not a man I am likely to forget, Padre Ruffino. Nor the men who helped him.

As for racial biology: Gregor, A. James; The Search for Neofascism, New York, Cambridge University Press (2006), p. 56, according to Wikipedia states that Mussolini was originally antiracialist. Not one jota in the wiki article states that Manifesto della Razza, bad as it was (it came after Chesterton's chapter on Mussolini in his book on Rome), ever tried to foist abortion or birth control on non-Aryan races. Unlike Sweden 1935-1970's and unlike some US States starting even earlier (and unlike ACORN right recently).

And as for Mussolini being a successor or prime ministers such as the infamous Cavour, it reminds me a bit of Gorbachev being a a successor to Lenin and Stalin. There are successors that Church men are glad for.

Conclusion: So far the debate went on on FB, there are things I could have added if James Bogle had raised the points, and will add if he does or someone else does. Mussolini was not perfect, but he was not the summum malum either. First of all that is not anything per se which is that, onlike summum bonum which per se is God. Second, the worst evil there actually and incidentally is is down in Hell, and even on earth the worst man ever to live will yet rule in the future and has so far not ruled in the past, unless he be a kind of comeback. But foremost, Mussolini was, if not the best at least one of the better of his time. At least as good as Roosevelt with New Deal, Fair Deal, Square Deal, Fordism, anti-Trust-laws. And a bit better insofar as he allowed no racialist eugenics in any part of his stretch of legitimate and effective power. Unlike Mola with Goering, unlike Churchill, and unlike Roosevelt (or was it already Truman?), he has no Guernica, Dresden or Hiroshima and Nagasaki against his soul.

You* have practically resumed what happened to French Catholicism. They are quite able to push canonisation of Abbé Pierre who had a mistress and used condoms. His partner, ideologically, pushes Georgia Guidestones agenda.

‎(Kouchner and he is alive. In Greek letters gematria does not make it number of the beast, have not checked with Hebrew letters)